


Confessions of a Disabled Dimension Hopper

by ofstormsandwolves



Series: nevertheless, she persisted [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 07:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11847108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofstormsandwolves/pseuds/ofstormsandwolves
Summary: Now Rose has got her Doctor, and she's back in Pete's World, she has a few confessions to make in regards to just what happened to her while in Pete's World. And the Doctor might not be too pleased with what he has to hear.





	Confessions of a Disabled Dimension Hopper

Travelling by zeppelin was a slow and arduous journey. While the flight itself was peaceful and smooth enough, it was also almost horrifically slow in the Doctor’s newly-human eyes, and the way Rose kept shifting uncomfortably opposite him wasn’t helping.

There’d been a short trek from Bad Wolf Bay, up to a small nearby village where Jackie got them a taxi to Bergen, where they then headed for the zeppelin port. Pete had already booked them onto the earliest available flight after Jackie phoned him, and they were being treated to first-class service in the first class area of the zeppelin. 

But something was still off.

Rose had been looking increasingly tired and uncomfortable since Bad Wolf Bay, and Jackie had asked her several times on the walk to the nearest village if she was alright. Rose had always responded with a tight-lipped smile and a nod, but the Doctor could tell something wasn’t right. Rose had been pleasant enough with him in the taxi ride to the zeppelin port, though; holding his hand in the back of the car and leaning against him comfortably, smiling up at him with the smile she only ever reserved for him.

Now, though, in the zeppelin, he couldn’t help but think something was wrong. Jackie kept giving Rose worried glances from across the aisle, Rose kept reaching for her right leg before catching his gaze and pulling her hand away. Had she maybe been injured before she’d reached him and Donna in the street?

“Rose?” he finally managed, voice sounding surprisingly broken and vulnerable even to himself.

Her head shot up, and Jackie’s head swivelled to stare at him.

“I’m fine,” Rose told him, forcing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes as she pre-empted his question.

“Are you?” he countered.

Across the aisle, Jackie looked away uncomfortably. The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. They were hiding something from him.

“Yeah,” Rose said, and she sounded a little more certain, a little more confident. “Just a little tired, ‘s all. Achy. It’s been a long day.”

The Doctor, however, wasn’t convinced. “Is that it?” he asked, sparing another brief glance at Jackie, who was pointedly ignoring them.  
Rose, instead of answering, shifted uncomfortably in her chair. There was a long silence, before suddenly Jackie pushed herself to her feet, muttering something about needing tea, before rushing off towards the bar at the back of the first class area. The Doctor and Rose watched her go, both a little perplexed, before the Doctor turned his attention back to Rose.

“Rose? Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

Rose blinked at him, maintaining his gaze for several long moments before she glanced away.

“No,” she said at last. “There’s... There’s something I need to tell you. I have a confession.”

~0~0~

The Doctor blinked.

“Doctor?” Rose prompted worriedly from her seat opposite him.

He blinked again, pulling his gaze from her leg to her face. “You were hurt.”

Rose smiled gently at him. “Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “But I’m alright. I survived. Dad was hurt too, but we both made full recoveries.” She stared down at her prosthetic leg, the leg of her trousers still pushed up to reveal the carbon fibre prosthetic beneath. “Well, almost.”

She gave him another smile, but instead the Doctor’s face darkened.

“Did Pete know that you would be injured?” he asked, and his voice was suddenly low and as dark as his face. The Oncoming Storm, Rose knew. “Did he know that he could have killed you?”

Rose’s face dropped. “He... He knew that it was a risk,” she admitted slowly. “Torchwood had a one person per hopper policy, it’s why Mickey hadn’t taken me away when we were trapped in the sphere room. He... He suggested sending me to Pete’s World, but said it could only carry one. When Dad came back for me, he didn’t realise just how bad it would be, though. He thought it was some health and safety thing the tech guys had insisted on; that it was just a precaution and would mean it would just be a bit rougher than usual. It wasn’t... It wasn’t until we were back here and the breach was closed that he realised just how dangerous it was.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “So he could have killed you because he wouldn’t listen to instructions.” He scoffed. “I thought he was supposed to be the head of Torchwood? What kind of leadership is that?”

Rose frowned at him then, taking in the tense body language and angry eyes of the man opposite her. “Doctor, if Dad hadn’t done anything, I’d have fallen into the Void. Yeah, I was hurt, but at least I’m here! At least I’m alive!”

Her words seemed to soften him somewhat, the anger giving way to worry in his eyes, but Rose still watched him carefully.

“He still left you physically disabled, Rose. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad he was there to stop you from falling into the Void, but you were still hurt.”

“Yeah,” Rose nodded, “and so was Dad. Not quite as badly as me, but still bad. And he regrets what he thinks he did to me every day, Doctor. So don’t you dare take it out on him when we get back to London. If you’d been in his position, if it had been a choice between losing me forever, or saving me and possibly hurting me, which would you choose?”

The Doctor hung his head then, and his response was so quiet that Rose barely heard it. But she did, just about. “I’d save you.”

After another long moment, Rose sighed, pushing herself to her feet to instead take up the seat beside the Doctor. When they’d boarded the zeppelin, Rose had wanted to be able to see him at all times, had been wanting to be sure he was really there, so she’d chosen to sit opposite him. But now she wanted to be as close as possible to him, to be able to hold his hand, cuddle into his side.

He seemed to want the same thing, as he immediately put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer.

“I’m alright, Doctor, I promise,” she told him softly, angling herself so she could look up at him. “I still built the Dimension Cannon, and found you, and work for Torchwood. I still did all those things, an’ it didn’t hold me back.” She paused. “It hurts sometimes, like now. Bit of an ache. And it’s rubbed a bit. I probably overdid it, with all the runnin’ and the fighting Daleks an’ everything.” She gave him a smile. “But I’m fine.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked quietly, brow furrowed slightly. “When I said goodbye to you on the beach, years ago. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Rose shrugged. “Because it wouldn’t have done any good. I mean, telling you what had happened would’ve just made you feel bad, an’ I’m alright. I mean, I’ve come to terms with it, an’ I knew pretty much immediately that amputation was the only option. So telling you wouldn’t have done anything but upset you.”

The Doctor had no response.

~0~0~

By the time they’d reached London, Jackie had somewhat sheepishly returned to her seat after spending an unreasonable amount of time ‘getting tea’ at the bar. The Doctor and Rose remained sat next to each other, and disembarked the zeppelin hand in hand upon arrival.

Pete was waiting beside a sleek black Lexus to take them back to the mansion, a blonde-haired toddler in his arms who couldn’t be much more than one blinking at them with big brown eyes.

“Doctor,” Pete greeted, holding his hand out to the other man as he drew near.

The Doctor glanced at Pete’s outstretched hand, before glancing at Rose, who nudged him. After a somewhat awkward pause, the Doctor shook the other man’s hand, but said nothing.

Pete shifted awkwardly. “Rose, uh, told you then.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. It was the only possible reason why the Doctor would be acting so cold towards him.

“I did,” Rose agreed quietly, watching as Jackie took her baby brother in her arms, cooing gently to him. “I explained everything, Dad.”

Pete nodded then, watching the other man carefully. “You know I wouldn’t willingly put Rose in danger, Doctor?”

There was another long pause, and the Doctor gave him a hard stare. “I’d hope not.”

Suddenly, Jackie was forcing a big smile, herding everyone towards the car. “You know what I could do with, Pete? A nice hot meal! Feels like ages since I’ve had a hot meal. How does takeaway sound? Doctor? What about Chinese?”

Before any of them really knew what had happened, Jackie had somehow herded them into the car, Tony was strapped into his car seat, and Rose was wedged between her baby brother and the Doctor in the backseat while Jackie and Pete were in the front.

“Don’t you have your own place?” the Doctor whispered to Rose, looking a little desperate.

She gave him a sympathetic smile. “No. I still live with Mum and Dad. Was thinking of maybe getting my own place, but Mum liked me being nearby, what with my leg and all. Even after working on Project Nova and the Dimension Cannon, she preferred me to stay at home.” She paused, glanced over at her little brother, who was babbling to himself in his car seat. “And then I wasn’t expecting to come back here after the Dimension Cannon started up, and, well...” She shrugged, trailing off.

“So I’ve got to spend the night at your parents’ place,” the Doctor murmured, looking a little worried at the thought.

Rose grinned then, the tongue-touched smile reserved only for him. Oh, how he’d missed that smile.

“Afraid so,” she told him softly, stealing a glance at her parents and accidentally catching her mum’s eye in the rear view mirror. The two Tyler women shared a smile. “But if you want, we’ll start looking for somewhere for the two of us, yeah? I get enough working for Torchwood, even when they had me stuck behind a desk.”

“You on a desk job?” the Doctor echoed, smiling for the first time possibly since the beach. “I’d have liked to see that.”

“Oh, shut up!” Rose snorted. “I wasn’t any worse than you’d have been!”

The Doctor tilted his head to the side at that. “Well,” he said after a long moment, “maybe not. But I’d still have liked to see it.”

~0~0~

“I thought I was doing the right thing.”

The Doctor blinked, and looked down at Rose, who was leaning against his chest. Jackie and Pete were upstairs putting Tony to bed, and he and Rose were alone in the sitting room. The telly was on, but neither of them were really watching it, and Rose had instead leaned back against the Doctor’s chest and closed her eyes. She’d taken her prosthetic off after dinner, and the Doctor had assumed she’d fallen asleep. But apparently not.

“By not telling you,” she clarified at his pause. “I thought I was doing the right thing not telling you about the accident. And, I suppose, I didn’t want to admit it. That admitting it to you would be admitting it to myself.”

“But you said you’d come to terms with it,” the Doctor reminded her in confusion. “You said you were alright with it.”

“Yeah,” Rose nodded, “but that doesn’t mean that in my head I wasn’t expecting to return to you and everything be how it was before. And telling you about my leg would mean things would change, and that maybe you’d think I couldn’t travel with you anymore, that I wouldn’t be able to keep up, or that I’d... I dunno, that I’d be a liability.”

The Doctor watched as she picked at a loose thread on her t-shirt rather than look round at him. She didn’t want to see his reaction, he realised. She was scared of what he might say.

“Rose,” he said finally, “I’d never think you’re a liability. And yes, things would change; they’d have to change, at least a bit. But that wouldn’t have meant I wouldn’t want you travelling with me. Besides, you’ve worked for Torchwood, you travelled dimensions. You more than proved yourself.”

She made a small noise, but he couldn’t tell if she was agreeing or not.

“Dad didn’t want me on a field team,” she told him quietly, suddenly. “Was worried I’d get hurt, or that it would be too much and my prosthetic would constantly rub, or something. He only put me on Project Nova because they needed the help. If the stars hadn’t started going out, he’d have left me on my desk job.” She paused. “He wouldn’t even give me the chance to prove I was still capable, that I could still cope and that I could handle being on a field team. By the time I did the first dimension jump, I was terrified. I’d been out of action for so long, an’ I was worried it would all go wrong.”

The Doctor sighed at that, rubbing her arm gently. “You needed to prove your capabilities to yourself, as well as Pete and Jackie,” he said knowingly. “You needed to take the risk, take a leap of faith and see if you were still the same person as you were before.”

Rose nodded, turning her head slightly but still not fully looking at him. “I’m not, though, Doctor. I’m not the same person. The previous me, the old me, wouldn’t have been scared about doing those dimension jumps. I’d have just done it. But every time I landed, I was terrified of where I was, of what might happen. And every time I jumped I had this... This _panic_ that it was going to go wrong, an’ that I was going to get hurt again.”

He pressed a kiss to her cheek. “But you didn’t.”

“No,” she agreed quietly. “But I could have.” She turned fully then, twisting her legs round and beneath her so she could turn and look at him, kneeling on her knees. “Are we actually doing this?”

The Doctor frowned in confusion, a portion of his mind taken up more with concern about whether or not the position she was in was good for her stump or not. She seemed comfortable enough, but he couldn’t be certain her sitting like that was a good idea, and desperately tried to recall distant medical training. A larger portion of his brain eventually latched onto Rose’s words and processed them.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“Us,” Rose told him. “Me and you. Being together. Getting a place together. Being a couple.”

“Oh,” he blinked. “Don’t you want to?” His heart sank.

“I do!” Rose responded quickly, wide-eyed. “I really do! It’s just... I don’t know. If we’re actually doing this, being together and in a relationship, I need to talk to you about my job.”

The Doctor blinked again.

“I don’t know if I want to carry it on. I mean, I love it, don’t get me wrong, but the dimension jumps. They, well, they really scared me. Not the places I ended up, not really, but the actual physical jumps. Actually having to do them scared me.”

“Well, they would,” the Doctor agreed slowly. “You were injured, doing a dimension jump. It’s only reasonable that you’d be anxious about them after that.” He paused, studied her carefully. “But do you really want to give up Torchwood for that reason? You won’t ever have to do another dimension jump again, Rose. Your dimension hopping days are over. And I don’t want you to give up a job you love because of something you won’t ever have to go through again. Being on a field team won’t require you to do anything like that. And if you don’t even want to do field work, then go back to your desk job. If you don’t feel like you can do field work, and you don’t want to do desk work, then I fully support you leaving that job. But don’t quit because of something you never have to do again, alright?”

At some point while he was speaking, he belatedly realised, Rose had begun to cry. But she was smiling too, and looking so relieved, and he realised that it was something that had clearly been weighing heavily on her mind since she’d realised she would remain in Pete’s World. The anxieties had scared her so much about the dimension jumps had clearly left their mark, and they would remain for some time, whether she worked for Torchwood or not. But, hopefully, Rose wouldn’t make any rash decisions solely on those anxieties now that he was with her and more than willing to help.

“I’ll think about it,” she said at last, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve not even said anything to Dad. I mean, I don’t really know what I wanna do, I don’t think. Today’s been... A lot to take in.”

“It has,” the Doctor agreed gently, pulling her closer. “But take your time, and think it through. I’m sure your dad can wait a few days while you make your decision.”

Rose nodded, and twisted back round to sit down again, before letting her head fall back against his chest.

~0~0~

It was quarter to three in the morning and the Doctor couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t that he wasn’t tired, he just couldn’t seem to manage it.

Maybe it was his newly-human body. Maybe it was his still-Time Lord brain, unaccustomed with needing so much rest. Maybe it was everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, still whirring about in his bigger-on-the-inside brain. Being created by Donna, telling Rose how he felt about her on the beach, the zeppelin ride home when Rose had confessed she’d kept a monumental secret from him. The first meeting with Pete after finding out he had (accidentally) caused Rose’s injuries, the tense dinner that had subsequently followed, and Rose’s wide-eyed baby brother staring curiously at him before bursting into tears the moment the Doctor tried to speak to him. Then, the conversation in the sitting room with Rose, where she confessed to being so scared her disability would mean he would no longer see her as the same person, that he might not want her, and that her injuries had changed her. That the dimension jumps she’d performed while searching for him had all been their own unique kind of hell for Rose, still terrified of history repeating itself and her being injured on another jump. Of Rose confessing that the initial jump to Pete’s World just over two years previously had left her questioning if she wanted to work for Torchwood at all.

Lying in bed was doing him no good, so he quietly and carefully extracted himself from Rose’s bed and headed downstairs. Perhaps a glass of water, or cup of tea was needed. Or, worst came to worst, he’d read yesterday’s newspaper.

But when he reached the kitchen, the Doctor found someone else was already there. Sat in the dark room, at the breakfast table, was the silhouette of a man.

“Hello, Doctor,” Pete said in the dark. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No,” the Doctor responded, his newly-human eyes taking a little longer to adjust to the lack of light. But then they did, and he could just make out Pete’s voice as his feet carried him across the room to the table.

Pete gestured for him to pull out a chair, and he did. The two men sat opposite each other, just staring.

“I know you probably hate me right now,” Pete said after a long moment. “And I can’t say I blame you.”

The Doctor said nothing.

“You know I’d have never deliberately endangered Rose’s life, Doctor? I would never have risked her life. But Jackie was distraught, and I’ve seen what those Cybermen can do. You know that. I watched them take my wife, and turn her into one of them. And all I could think was, if your plan failed, if for whatever reason it didn’t work, the same would happen to Rose. And I couldn’t let that happen. So I made a decision, in the heat of the moment, and I didn’t think it through, and Rose was hurt because of it. And I regret that every day, Doctor. But she’s alive. She’s alive, and she’s safe, and she’s been so amazing. She’s worked so hard at everything. At Torchwood, at her physio to get herself back on her feet, at everything.”

The Doctor sniffed, and sat back in his chair. “But you were aware there were risks.”

Pete’s jaw clenched. “Yes. But as I said, I couldn’t just do nothing. Wouldn’t you have done the same, Doctor? If it was a choice between knowingly endangering Rose but ultimately getting her out alive, or doing nothing and seeing her die, wouldn’t you have done the same?”

The Doctor swallowed at that. Pete was unknowingly echoing Rose’s question on the zeppelin the day before, and his answer was the same as he’d told Rose.  
But he wouldn’t tell Pete. Not yet.

“I would have had a plan,” he managed through grit teeth. “I wouldn’t have just used a hopper knowing that there were explicit instructions that it could only carry one person. Everyone with you had a hopper- Mickey, Jackie, Jake! Why not take one of theirs?” His voice had risen as he spoke, rising almost to a shout, and he was vaguely aware that he was breathing heavily, the anger building up inside him, but he didn’t care. He wanted Pete’s answers.

“There wasn’t time,” Pete responded, and he was calm. Calculated. “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself the same questions these past two years or so? Don’t you think I’ve gone through every little thing I’d done wrong, every little step I’d taken that resulted in Rose losing a leg? Don’t you think that I’ve thought about all this? About how if I hadn’t panicked so much, I could have grabbed another hopper? That if I’d taken another hopper, I could have grabbed Rose, thrust it into her hands, and pulled us both back across the Void safely? Don’t you think I sometimes lay awake at night and watch Jaqs asleep next to me, wondering how she could possibly love me after I did that to our daughter?” He paused, looked away for a moment, before looking back and meeting the Doctor’s eyes. “There’s nothing you can say to me that I haven’t already thought of, Doctor. And I’m not surprised that you hate me for the choices I made. Sometimes I hate me too.”

There was a heavy silence then, the two men at some sort of stalemate, and eventually the Doctor got to his feet. There was nothing more to say. Everything that could be said had been said, and anything else would just have them going round in circles.

But as he reached the kitchen door, the Doctor realised that there was one last thing left to be said, one that Pete had possibly heard before, from Jackie, and Rose, and Mickey, and Jake. But not from him. And he had a feeling that Pete needed to hear it from him.

“Pete?”

The other man looked up. “Yes?”

The Doctor looked away for a brief moment, taking a breath. It needed to be said. He met Pete’s gaze in the dark of the room. “You did the right thing.”


End file.
